Page 24 of Top Shelf

Banners overhead drip the Serpents’ colors of emerald green and matte black instead of BSUs comforting bermuda blue and silver. My mother’s voice booms over the announcer’s speakers, deafeningly loud as it echoes off the walls. Her tone is sharp and cold as she rattles off expectations like they are bullet points on a to-do list. Contracts flutter down from the rafters, the sharp edges of pages slicing into my skin until blood drips down my arms. I try to cover myself, but they rain down heavier, each one cutting away at me until I fear there will be nothing left. That I will have given all of myself to my mother’s demands.

Somewhere behind me, I hear footsteps approaching. Three sets. Slow and certain.

Spinning, I see them. Ronan, Lucian, Silas. Only they’re as tall as the rafters, eyes glowing in the dark.

They stalk closer, but I can’t move, can’t breathe.

Hands again. Blue eyes. Storm eyes. The moth. All of it.

I’m trapped.

Caught between the night that broke me and the life I can’t escape.

6

WREN

Monday marksthe beginning of my first week of classes at Valehurst. After spending the rest of the weekend hibernating in my apartment after the austere gala my parents threw, I’m forced back into the world.

Reluctantly, I have to admit that the Valehurst campus is beautiful—if you’re into the wholeintimidating stone monoliths built by dead men who definitely owned land and peoplevibe. Valehurst isn’t just elite. It’s ancient. Regal brick buildings that drip with history and arrogance, carved stone archways, and ivy so well-manicured it might as well be a legacy student. The kind of place where money doesn’t whisper—it signs checks and rewrites policies.

It’s also the kind of place where, when you set foot on campus, you’re not just expected to succeed. You’re expected toexcel. To dominate. To thrive in an ecosystem of ambition, cold-pressed green juice, and trust funds with more zeros than any one person could spend in a dozen lifetimes.

I hate how much of it feels familiar. Akin to the old life I thought I’d freed myself from. I grew up in this world. Went toschool with kids like these…and then I readily turned my back on it all when I left for BSU.

Despite my attempt to put this life in my rearview mirror, it appears everyone knows who I am already…at least, they know my name. Everywhere I go, I’m chased by whispers of “Winslow.” At a school where my parents are illustrious alumni and significant benefactors, not to mention the fact that hockey runs in the blood of every local within a hundred-mile radius of this small college town, means you’d have to be living under a rock not to know who the Atlantic City Serpents Winslows are.

Which is just my luck.

While BSU was a hockey-heavy college—and I loved it for that—my family’s name didn’t carry the same weight or influence. I could easily get lost in the crowd. Be a faceless fan in the throng.

But not here.

I might as well be wearing a neon sign with my name on it for all the staring I’ve gotten today. It makes it difficult to keep my head down and focus on just getting through classes and my internship. Made even worse by the fact that it is becoming increasingly clear I’m playing catch-up, trying to turn an Applied Stats degree into one in Sports Business & Management.

The classes here are no joke. The professors are more like corporate CEOs disguised as tenured lecturers, and everyone talks like they’re already five years into a career they inherited. The one thing that has become abundantly clear in just a day is that no one is here to make friends. It’s all about forging alliances. Making the right connections. The few students in class who have tried to talk to me either want something from my last name or want to avoid someone else’s.

Despite that and the hardcore lecturers who have already piled an entire semester’s worth of work on us in a single day,switching my major is the one thing my parents insisted on that I don’t totally hate. For all my bitching and moaning, I do genuinelylovehockey. I love the sport. The adrenaline rush. The roaring of the crowd. The smell of sweat and blood and violence. It’s raw. Real. Unlike any other sport on the planet.

To be a girl boss of men like that? Hell fucking yeah!

The only reason I hadn’t initially picked such a major was that it hit too close to home. It was too much like walking in my family’s footsteps instead of blazing my own path.

But now, if I’m being dragged along that path anyway, I figure I may as well embrace this small bit that I actually enjoy.

I’m halfway to my next class, thumbing out a text to Dylan, when a shadow falls across my phone screen. Footsteps match mine. Another pair. Then more.

My fingers still.

“Hey,” a voice says, casual, smiling. A boy in a letterman jacket strolls up beside me, all straight teeth and cocky confidence.

My eyes flick over the rest of them—his teammates, I assume—spread around me like a damn net. They aren’t hockey players. I’d recognize their faces if they were. Based on their broad shoulders and muscular biceps and calves, I’d hazard a guess at football players.

I stop walking. So do they, as I eye each of them up. “Can I help you?”

The words come out colder than I intended, but screw it. Even on a college campus in broad daylight, being boxed in by five guys twice my size isn’t exactly comforting.

“Relax,” he says, lifting his hands like I’ve wounded his pride. “We were just wondering if you could hook us up with some Serpents tickets.”